White House Pushes Economic Case for Climate Action

The White House is trying to put a price on delaying action on climate change.

Aiming to create a sense of urgency around its actions to curb greenhouse gas emissions, the White House is issuing a report Tuesday that argues that the longer the delay, the more future generations will bear costs.

The report doesn’t put a dollar amount on what the administration says is the price of inaction. Instead, it employs a pair of economic models to predict its magnitude.

Critics of climate action argue that the upfront costs to cut carbon emissions are greater than the administration predicts. They are also skeptical of predictions of how much climate change will cost future generations.

The White House report finds that economic costs to address climate change rise by 40% in each decade in which there is a delay in enacting policies to cut carbon emissions.

It also finds that for each 1 degree Celsius rise in global temperature, the global gross domestic product takes an increasingly larger hit. In other words, it says, an increase of between 3 and 4 degrees creates more economic damage than an increase of between 2 and 3 degrees.

“If we do nothing this year, we save money this year,” said Jim Stock, leader author of the report and a staff member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers until earlier this month. “But the trouble is, by doing nothing this year, it costs us more in the future.”

The report, to be released along with several other initiatives on Tuesday, is meant to help build the case for the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposed carbon rule for power plants, which is the cornerstone of President Barack Obama’s climate agenda. Public hearings on the rule begin Tuesday and will be held in Washington, D.C., as well as in Denver, Atlanta and Pittsburgh over the coming days.

Authors of the White House report say that a number of complexities come into play in determining future costs from climate change. For one, action by the U.S. would only be effective at reducing global carbon emissions if other countries, namely China and India, follow suit. If EPA moved forward with controlling carbon emissions without corresponding action by other nations, the U.S. could incur both the short-term costs of shifting to less-carbon intensive sources of energy and also the future costs of delay, the authors say, since global emissions will continue to rise.

Tuesday’s report is part of a wider administration effort aimed at piecemeal, executive-action efforts to address climate change. Among other administration actions, the Energy Department is due to announce a series of actions to clamp down on methane, a greenhouse gas.

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